Top 10 Free Online Virus Scanners

There might be times when your desktop antivirus has turned a zombie, rendered practically useless by some trojan or a virus. The possibility of such a thing happening is very rare, but still having an option to cross check is always good. An online virus scanner should never be considered a substitute for an installed antivirus scanner. But if you suspect your installed desktop antivirus is missing a threat or you simply want a second opinion, an online scanner can be a valuable adjunct to security. The list below introduces some of the best online antivirus services and is in no particular order.

Top 10 Free Online Virus Scanners

1. Kaspersky Free online virus scan

Kaspersky Anti-Virus is one of the mostly used Antivirus software and has got a Free online virus scan tool as well. Kaspersky provides a free File Scanner which will help you to scan suspicious file on your machine. The online virus scanner tool is extremely fast and efficient. It can be configured to scan individual files, folders, and drives. Detection only.

BitDefender QuickScan combines intelligent local scanning and in-the-cloud scanning to create an advanced online antivirus scanner which detects e-threats in memory. BitDefender QuickScan is very light on the computer memory, it requires only a very small browser plugin for client-side tasks. Detection only.

Trend Micro’s Housecall is one of the few tools in our Top 10 Online Scanners to offer cleaning or deleting of infected files. If you are being attacked by popular viruses, than you need to scan your PC with Trend Micro Housecall. This scanner easily finds and kills popular viruses. But on the other hand, rare viruses usually aren’t found by this scanner and Trojan horses escape too. Updates and detection are not quite as reliable as the Kaspersky options above. Select Housecall only if cleaning or deletion is desired.

VirSCAN.org is another free online scan service, which will check the uploaded files for viruses, trojans, backdoors, spyware and other malware using different antivirus engines. You can upload any type of files and there is 10Mb limit per file. VirSCAN supports RAR and Zip decompression, but there should be less than 10 files in the archive. Detection only.

F-Secure’s free Online virus scanner is capable of finding and cleaning viruses and trojans. But ability to clean the virus is not guaranteed. It works on Internet Explorer 6 or newer with ActiveX and Javascript enabled, or Firefox 3. There are different options available, like ‘Quick scan’ and ‘Full scan’. Detection & cleaning.

6. Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner

Windows Live OneCare Safety Scanner is the only scanner which works with Windows Vista. It perfectly detects popular viruses, but most of the spyware, Trojans, rootkits and other pests are not detected. And it only works with Internet explorer. By the way, its not completely free. They have a free trial and an upgrade costs $49.95. Detection Only.

Virustotal is a free service which can be used to analyze suspicious files and facilitates for quick detection of viruses, worms, trojans and all other kinds of malware by antivirus engines. You can submit single files only to Virustotal, via their online scanner or by email. File size must not exceed 5Mb. The file is scanned by around 30 well-known virus scanners and results reported for each. Detection only.

Panda active scan is a free tool for detecting and eliminating viruses from your computer. It installs as an ActiveX control in your Web browser (Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher). Another good thing is that it scans our e-mail too. But on the other hand, this scanner doesn’t perfectly detect Trojans and backdoors. Detection and cleaning.

FortiGuard Center can be used to discover a suspicious file on your machine, or suspect that a program you downloaded from the internet might be malicious. You can use the free virus scanner to scan the files present in your computer for viruses. Only one file of up to 1MB can be checked at one time. You can also submit sample files for analysis in their research labs. Detection only.

Like Virustotal, Jotti returns scan results for several different scanners. The scan engines used by Jottie differ from those used by Virustotal and thus it’s often worthwhile to use both. Detection only.

Raju PP Founder-Editor Raju is the founder-editor of Technology Personalized. A proud geek and an Internet freak, who is also a social networking enthusiast. You can follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. Mail Raju PP. Follow rajupp